April 19, 2006

E-mail tracking is as good as it has ever been, but our interpretation of the results needs to adjust. With the inceased use of filters and with more applications set NOT to display images in the e-mail inbox, the measure of success is changing. My suggestion: pay more attention to clicks than open rates, and solicit feedback about the e-mails to determine success.

There are three important things know about “opens.”

1) First, for most e-mail service providers, an “open” is registered any time a specific tiny 1x1 pixel wide image appears on a computer screen. This image is usually placed in the upper left corner of HTML e-mails.

2) Second, many e-mail applications have pre-determined settings that do not automatically display images in the e-mail. In those cases, users may habitually read the news and just not display the images. Or even if they do click an image that interests them, if the little 1x1 pixel tracker is not displayed, the "open" is not recorded.

>> So with the onset of advanced filtering technologies, and moreso these days than ever before, we need to allow for the fact that “opens” are very likely showing up at numbers less than actual.